Knowledge of The External World - AQA AS Philosophy - Complete Revision Notes

COMPLETE REVISION NOTES FOR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD ­ AQA AS PHILOSOPHY Direct RealismDIRECT REALISM Humans simply experience that which is already there to be perceived We experience the material objects themselves- our perception of the qualities is unmediated Often referred to as the `man in the street view' as it fails to take account of philosophical considerations. This has lead to it being named naive or common-sense realism. They operate with a `what you see is what you get' basis, believing the way we perceive the world is exactly how it is All of the qualities of an object; colour, smell, sound, texture, exist within the object itself and our perceptions of this are unmediated.Imagine an apple. It is reddish-green, crisp, glossy and smells sweet. For a Direct Realist, all of thesequalities exist within the apple. If no-one is around to perceive the apple, all these qualities wouldcontinue to be. Objects existence is not dependent upon human experience.OBJECTIONargument from illusion There are cases where one's experience misrepresents reality For example, the stick that appears bent in water. Following direct realism, this leaves only two options; The stick itself does actually bend when entered into water and then straightens again when taken out The direct/common-sense realist is wrong and our perception of an object is not always identical to the object The second option seems more viable and this leads to a view that distortion occurs at perceptual level rather than the objective level. Direct RealismOBJECTION TO ILLUSIONS A more sophisticated direct realist could apply to science, notably physics, to demonstrate that change does not occur internally at the level of perception but can be accounted for externally. The stick appearing to be bent in water is actually due a physical fact about refraction rather than human mental error.J.L Austin"if a church were cunningly camouflaged so that it looked like a barn, how could any serious

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We see, of course, a church that nowlooks like a barn" Our perception still matches the object and an illusion is not a failure of senses but a property of the object we not see the object of a stick which is changed by the refraction of light Direct RealismDESCARTES Used the example of the phantom limb to illustrate sensory deception. People who have had limbs amputated still claim to feel pain or movement within the missing limb.…read more

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I perceive, must be distinctCOUNTER ARGUMENT Appearance is defined as being a direct experience of an object from a specific position; different positions yield different perceptions. Perspectival distortion is as much a physical fact of the world as the penny's roundness. Perceptual variation does not occur randomly. Scientific disciplines such as optics can explain and predict when such as variations occur.…read more

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Hallucinatory perceptions are distinct from veridical perception. If they were not then we wouldnot be able to distinguish them in the first place. For example, Descartes Phantom Limb. The people may feel that their missing limb is in pain, however, when they rationalise and refer to their prior knowledge that the limb has been amputated; they become aware that they are hallucinating. There we can distinguish between hallucinations and reality- perhaps not immediately.…read more

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Representative RealismPROBLEMS WITH SENSE DATAThe Ontological Question If sense data sustain no physical existence then it becomes hard to pinpoint their location. Russell, for example, argued that they are mental phenomena. However, if both sense data and sensation are mental, how sense data is supposed to provide a mechanism that mediates between mental and physical realms is not really explained.…read more

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Solidity, Extension, Number Colour, Taste, Smell, Sound Motion, Figure If we apply this to a world with no humans, then the primary qualities of the physical world will exist, whereas the secondary ones will not.…read more

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These are further reducible to the quantum level where they share qualities of waves and particles. At this level the table is not solid at all but rather a lattice of energy. Common Sense realism fails as if we were to approach the physical world directly that the objects of our experience would present themselves (.e.g. the table) as a lattice of energy and not being a brown oblong object.…read more

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We can substitute the word God for the idea of a material universe without any loss of meaning In both objects still exist regardless if someone is perceiving them or not Reality is not reliant upon a perceiver They have opposing opinions about the existence of an external world IdealismBERKELEY AND GODCriticism of Esse Est Percipi If I see a cat in one place, look away and it is in another. Did the cat move or cease to exist as Ilooked away.…read more

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He pushes Locke's empiricism to the extreme. Locke says that we can only experience the world via the sense data that is created from primary qualities. From an empirical point, we can never know material substance at all. IdealismPRIEST"No one has refuted Berkeley, even though most people insist that his view is false" Priest is referring to the fact that Berkeley has managed to dismiss Locke's idea that there is a difference between Primary and Secondary qualities.…read more